The verdict is expected in the trial of a former East German secret police officer accused of killing a Polish firefighter on the Berlin border 50 years ago.
Martin Naumann, now 80, is accused of shooting Czesław Kukuczka on 29 March 1974 as he walked through the last of a series of checkpoints in a traffic area in the divided city. Escape Pass to West Berlin.
The truth surrounding Kuguska's death was never revealed to his family. Instead, his cremated remains were sent to his wife Emilia weeks later in a casket, after which he was buried in a private ceremony by his family on the South Side. Poland.
The research skills of a historian steeped in the history of the Ministry of State Security (MfS) or the Stasi, the intelligence and secret police of the communist GDR – should uncover the details of the case years later.
Stephen Appelius found documents in the former Stasi's archives about the shooting and the attempted cover-up, and tracked down Kuczka's family in Poland. They warned the Polish judiciary that a European arrest warrant had been issued for Nauman in 2021, putting pressure on German investigators to reopen a case that had been dormant for decades. Nauman was charged with murder in October last year.
Details linking Naumann to the murder emerged in 2016, pieced together from documents shredded by Stasi officials to cover up the regime's activities in its dying days. The digital puzzle machine is specially made for the purpose.
Naumann, of Leipzig, who has repeatedly denied the charges against him, was one of the first former East German officers to be charged with murder instead of murder. Prosecutors had asked for a 12-year sentence, highlighting the “particularly treacherous” nature of the murder, which meant that Kukuska was shot in the belief that she was free.
The court heard how Kuczka, a 38-year-old father of three from the mountain village of Kaminica near Krakow in southern Poland, got into the Polish embassy in East Berlin. Germany. He threatened to detonate a fake bomb which, he said, would blow up the embassy and other buildings if detonated.
According to the research of historians Filip Gańczak and Hans-Hermann Hertle, embassy staff contacted the Stasi and told them of the threat of Kukuska. Openly cooperating with the embassy, Stasi officers came to meet Pole, gave him an exit visa and five West Deutschmarks, and escorted him to the nearby Friedrichstrasse border crossing. While Kukuska was under the impression that he would soon be a free man, Stasi officials were ordered to “defuse” him, to use the euphemism commonly used to kill political enemies.
Hiding behind a strategically placed curtain at the station, Nauman allegedly shot Kukuska in the back from a distance of about 2 meters after he passed two of the three checkpoints.
According to the Stasi's report on the incident, “operational forces” succeeded at around 3 p.m. [Kukuczka] Harmless without attracting any special attention from other outgoing passengers”.
Nauman, who was 18 at the time of the death of Kucuska's daughter's father, was described by a prosecutor as the “last link in the chain of command” that led to the murder, but he ultimately carried out the order. requested.
Naumann's attorney, Andrea Liebscher, insisted that her client was innocent and that there was no evidence that he fired the shots or that the killing could be considered murder rather than manslaughter. He said Kukuska was not an innocent party who issued the bomb threat and “should have expected the authorities to intervene with weapons.”
Nauman usually appeared in court wearing a black corduroy hat and trainers, holding an office file to cover his face. He was described as having lived a quiet retirement in suburban Leipzig for decades until he caught up with him last year in 2016. He spoke only once to confirm his identity.
Three pensioners who were teenagers at the time on a school trip from West Germany to communist East Berlin are set to testify. Petra L, 65, a retired teacher from Hessen, recalls spending a “typical day” in East Berlin before returning with her classmates through border controls in the heavily guarded underground tunnel at Friedrichstraße station. A man in sunglasses caught her attention, she said. “It was strange because we were underground.” He recalled how the man pulled a handgun and shot a passer-by with a briefcase, leaving bystanders “putting their hands over their mouths in shock”.
“Suddenly the doors opened where there was none before, and people in uniform emerged and blocked the passage,” he said.
On the sidelines of the trial, Gańczak said that while officials in communist Poland and their counterparts in East Germany (GDR) tried to cover up the murder, they disagreed on how to present it. “Although the Polish side wanted it to appear that Kukuska took her own life, the GDR disagreed … According to the abridged version of events they produced, there was an incident at the border crossing that resulted in Kukuska. were killed. The family was not allowed to ask further questions.
In one version, Kuguska was said to be armed, but there is no evidence to support this. There were no explosives he was allegedly carrying.
Kukuska was taken to the Stasi prison hospital in Berlin-Hohenshonhausen, where an autopsy revealed she had bled to death.
Reflecting its historical significance, the trial is being recorded, as have some Holocaust-related trials in recent years.
Kukuksa's family, including his sister and his daughter, now 68, still don't know what their father planned. According to stories he longed after a life in Florida.
It is estimated that 140 or more people were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall, which divided the city between 1961 and 1989. Only a handful of East German officials and border guards have so far faced prosecution for the deaths.
High-ranking officials have often escaped justice. Attempts to try Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi from 1957 to 1989, failed repeatedly until, in 1993, he was sentenced to six years in prison for killing two police officers in 1931 as a young communist militant.
